Dear Moderator

Dear Moderator,

Welcome to my blog, I am Esme Finch. On here you can find my research evidence, evaluation questions and the final product of our opening title film. I am in a group with Ellie Walton and Joanna Lewin. I hope you will like my work, thank you.

FILM

WATCH FILM HERE!

PRELIM

This is our Prelim 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IVmAA3IMTs0

1 FORMS AND CONVENTIONS

Titles- 

We researched professional film title sequences in a variety of ways, such as the website 'art of the title'. 

As we are making a comedy film opening we decided that an element of surprise and fun was key to indicating genre to our audience. We also knew we had to signal the location very early on, which is a restaurant setting. Therefore we decided we would use CGi to introduce our titles and have them appearing on different part of props in a way that would be visually arresting. We start with our production company 'WLF' where milk is being poured onto a chopping board and displays the name. We edited this on after effects.  

In common with most films we build up with the title of our film at the end.  We based our methods on food ink.

Sound – music, voice over, dialogue

Our soundtrack has three main elements, which often feature in film openings: the musical soundtrack dialogue and voiceover. The audience first hears the soundtrack. We chose a musical soundtrack called…. It has upbeat, cheerful and lively qualities.

The voice over is crucial in introducing our central character – Danni, the gap year student. The voice over is important in establishing the point of view and making the audience share her attitudes towards her employer and customers she meets.

Although Danni and her opinions do not feature largely, because they’ll be developed later on in the film, nether the less she sets the tone of how the audience sees what’s going on. Everything that goes on in the British restaurant is all very foreign to Danni as she’s Australian and this is Britain. She’s alternately aspirated and amused with the people she encounters.

In doing this we are echoing the convention of other comedy films like Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging where the narrative is framed through the viewpoint of the teenage girl.

The dialogue is in snippets to introduce social satire types. We had one of the celebrities complaining about her hair extension falling out to emphasis the stupidity of the girl.

2. SOCIAL GROUP

2. SOCIAL GROUP 

Stereotype: celebrity chef ( left Heston Blumenthal) Cutting edge molecular Gastronomy, obsessed with inventing new recipes with scientific approach. High profile TV appearances. Our chef (right) is modelled on this stereotype 

We have chosen a comic stereotype relating to body image here: fat people are often stereotyped in a negative way as figures of fun; Dawn French, for example, is famous for drawing attention to her large appetite in comedy sitcoms such as The Vicar Of Dibley. 

Magazines and online news sites are crammed full of representations of celebrities: Their clothes, their escapades, their spending habits, their love lives and their holidays seem to have an inexhaustible fascination for readers. We depict celebrity stereotypes as being empty headed and obsessed with their body image.

This social  stereotype is the posh social climber, like Penelope Keith in The Good Life. We introduce them a glass fine white wine being swirled in front of them as they are the kind of people who think of themselves as the wine connoisseurs. this kind of customer likes to boast and bandy about names of famous restaurants and hotels that they have dined in to show off  about their knowledge of cuisine. they are also the kind of people who follow trends in the press about the latest diet fads. they are likely to shop at waitrose and want to know that their food is ethically sourced and of the finest quality. The recent horse meat scandal is likely to have appalled them and made them suspicious of whatever they put into their mouths. At restaurants they are likely to talk very haughtily  in a RP accent like Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life. 

I decided to compare Dani (the main character) from in our opening Zest to Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary'.
Both films have a comedy essence to them. 'Bridget Jones' is a comedy romance and 'Zest' is a comedy'. There are aspects of resemblance which occur  in both, she wears:  sturdy jackets, with a smart casual shirt underneath to create a laid back edgy look. her hair messy and wavy, shows she has a genuine feel to her.It helps the audiences identify the emotions of the characters easily. Her face expression is stern looking, as if she is very competent, this is similar to Dani who plays our Aussie gap year student, who comes from a sturdy upbringing and has worked in a restaurant all her life, so she knows how to handle tough situations. 

The social group represented by 'Zest' is aged around 16-30+mainly teenagers and young adults, both gender but mainly male. 
People around that age would watch TV and films like Bridget Jones Diary, the Inbetweeners, Chocolat, Waitress, and Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory that includes elements like slap stick comedy, narration from main characters, excitement  etc. So audiences are likely to be engaged and interested in our film 'Zest'. 

 

3 DISTRIBUTION

View my PREZI on distribution 

4. Who is YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?

4. TARGET AUDIENCE 

When planning on our film 'Zest', one of the things we did was deciding who our target audience is. Our film is set in the modern days with characters who could be your wacky friend or parents and hoping to create comedy. It is energetic, hectic and imaginative, and aimed at the kind of mainstream audience that might watch mainstream comedy as well as  special interest programmes such as cookery shows.

Planning our viewer profile:

Age group: 15-30+, teenagers in schools/ universities

Gender: 60%male 40%female

They are likely to watch TV programs like: Sherlock Holmes, Top Gear, Friends, Big Bang Theory, InBetweeners, Fawlty Towers, Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver 15 minute meals

They are likely to go to the cinema fairly often and see films like: Shaun of The Dead, The Man On the Ledge, Bulletboy, Seven Pounds, The Hunger Games, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging

In their leisure time, they will listen to  music, watch videos on Youtube play video games, and go on social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr i mention these social network sites because they will be included in our distribution planning.

They might go to restaurants and fast food shops like McDonald, KFC, Nandos, Subway, Costa, Starbucks Coffee.

Clothes: Top Man, Top Shop, Superdry, River Island, Next, Jack Wills, Fat Face: for this reason, we will dress our characters in the kind of clothes that our audience can relate to. 

Media: Mostly Blackberry and Iphone. They use them for browsing the Internet like watching videos on Youtube and going on Facebook when they are out, connecting and chatting with friends and listening to music. I know that younger audiences use mobile devices more than any other technology to access information and connect to their friends, so i will use this knowledge when i distribute my film and attract my audience.

Here is a collage i made by using Photoshop that shows the special feature of our target audience.

5 ATTRACTING & ADDRESSING AUDIENCES

Current films which have been released this Easter which have the same comedic appeal to similar target audiences are 'The Croods', 'Identity Thief', 'The Big Wedding' . 
These films are 'crowd pleasers' and work well. 

I have done my evaluation question on SlideShare

HERE

6. NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Presentation media 1 1 from es-mef

7 WHAT HAVE I LEARNT ABOUT FILM MAKING

From when I first started this course - and did a thriller opening called Cherie along with the rest of the class - I was very inexperienced and had little knowledge on anything to do with filming, such as the camera angles and shots, lighting and sound effects. 

Looking back at the beginning of my project, I have learned a lot about new technologies, distribution practices and film production, etc.

In my preliminary exercise, I have tried working on shot reverse shot, different camera angles and types of camera shots to show continuity and conversations between the characters. It was hard for me as it was my first time to tried shooting a real video, but with experimenting and testing, I overcame it and have successfully produced the preliminary task.

I also learned how to make the best use of a tripod and how to balance it. Looking back now I think it was very useful as it really helped me get prepared for filming the opening sequence and if it was't for the preliminary task, the filming and editing of our media project wouldn't have gone as well as it had.

A challenge we had in our group was editing on green screen. We did not know at the time of shooting the two women, that the larger one was wearing a green coat, so therefore we could not edit the background. Moreover if some shades of the green screen are darker this effects the editing process as it becomes all grainy and transparent. We have learn't from this mistake in future editing circumstances.

In our film editing, I chose to use Imovie. Although I wasn't that familiar with it in the beginning, but after the preliminary task I have learned a lot about it and it had made editing our opening so much easier as all of us were quite familiar with it already.

In order to learn how to do the filming for Cherie, I first watched a film opening called Delicatessen on The Art Of The Title. What I learned was about the camerawork: the camera panned across a series of still objects rather than moving people. The title sequences was distinctive because the titles were embedded in the visuals in a relevant way: for example, the director of music was shown on a gramophone record,  the costumier's name was sewn into a clothing label, the director of photography was engraved on the top of a camera. From this I learned how important it was to make the title sequence an integral part of the film. When we cam to make our film this is what we did. 

Since then, I feel much more confident when filming and am more familiar with the different aspects of filming. I have learnt that it takes a fair amount of time getting everything in place, and sorting out things such as making sure the lighting is spot on. It takes more than one shot/take to get the result you wanted, as you have to change things around, do things differently, use more interesting angles and take on board the other class mate's suggestions so everyone has a fair input in filming.  For example, our first film shoot for Zest failed because we had not judged lighting levels.

Our first scene filmed in the cafeteria: dark lighting

After looking back at the first film opening we did (Cherie) as well as our final exam film opening, the improvement on behalf of everyone in my group has improved. We are all more positive and independent when we do different aspects of filming and editing on our own and I think this has showed in our final product. We have used a variety of tools, such as our blogs, Facebook and mobile phones to help us become more organised and manage our time.

Overall, after finishing the project, I have realized that there were some important elements in order to make a film/ a film opening interesting to raise interest from my target audiences. One of them is the story board because no matter how good your editing skills are, without an interesting story, you still wouldn't be able to engage your target audiences. There are also other important factors that I have learned throughout the project, for example like editing, sound and mise-en-scene, etc. They would all help convey the mood and atmosphere of the film to audiences and also shows the genre of the film. I think in order to create a good, successful film opening, the most important thing was that all of the factors that I have mentioned above must be well balanced. You cant spend all your time focusing on getting a nice story but not putting any effort in choosing the right music and dialogue.

I have learned a lot throughout the process and I believe these skills and techniques would be very useful in the rest of the course and even for my future career.

PLANNING: Website

This is our layout view of our Website. 

PLANNING: TWITTER PAGE

To advertise our film opening to the public, we created a Twitter page in order to maintain interest within our target audience, particularly in relation to information about the film - such as the release date, competitions, daily updates etc.

By creating a Twitter page, we are essentially interacting with our target audience; keeping them informed with information relating to the film. Additionally, the fact that we have uploaded multiple posters on our Twitter page gives our target audience an insight into our film, as we are providing them with a visual image.

PLANNING: Film Poster

 We edited some photographs we took for our webpage, facebook and our film poster on Photoshop. We plan to accommodate on the web page design in order to attract and address audiences by adding; institutional features: icons for Twitter and FaceBook; a screenshot from your film with a 'play' button so that it looks like a trailer; and a competition offer. 

CONSTRUCTION: Voiceover

Today we rehearsed the voice overs with a real Australian accent, so we could get a flavor of how she pronounced certain words. 

CONSTRUCTION: VOICEOVER SCRIPT

Dear Dad..

1) Well my gap year has got off to crazy start: I’m here in rainy England and Poms 

are WEIRD.

You know me, zest for life, well I thought I’d found my dream job

British restaurant, so I thought: but what did I find : a weirdo chef (Max)

(Before Eydie) Some of the customers are gross..

2) Bet she couldn’t go three rounds with a roo

3) I’d like to shove some of them in that celebrity jungle show!

4) Oh Dad! I’m trying hard to make a go of things, but the girls are bimbo airheads! 

(twins)

BANANA PANCAKE: banana pancake: banana being chopped? (Pancake in pan 

flip?)

5) But I’m really home sick ! I can’t see any boyfriend material here (biker boys)

6) (explosion) Oh dad, gotta go! Chef’s microwaved the wine again!

The soundtrack we chose to go in our film opening is 'Banana Pancakes' by Jack

 

Johnson. We chose this because it is a feel good, upbeat and cheerful song which

 immediately puts you in a good mood. Also, the lyrics in the song relates to the main 

theme and focus in our film opening.

CONSTRUCTION: Pre-Production Poster

This is the pre-production poster of the film to stimulate enthusiasm.

PLANNING: Jack Johnson Banana Pancakes

Today we listened to a variety of music to fit into our opening scene ZEST. We listened to music choices such as songs form The Holiday soundtrack, but came to a conclusion that we preferred Banana Pancakes as this had a bubbly happy feel to it, and we felt that because the song is about food this fitted into our theme.

EVALUATION: Film Release Dates

We decided that the 29th would be a good day to open as it is break up time for Easter. March is a happy time as spring arrives, so being a comedy, audiences would like to see a feel good film. Many other comedies open at this time, and therefore this would be perfect for our film. 
Current films which have been released this Easter which have the same comedic appeal to similar target audiences are 'The Croods', 'Identity Thief', 'The Big Wedding' . 
These films are 'crowd pleasers' and work well. 

CONSTRUCTION:EDITING CUSTOMERS

Today we edited all our scenes which involved the different costumers. We edited the green screen in the background, replacing it with the environmental image of a restaurant.



We used After Effects and iMovie to edit our film.
We found out that when using a green screen you cannot have someone wearing green as well, as the After Effect picked up the persons clothing. 
We chose a green screen instead of a real location because we could not find a good enough setting which looked authentic. we felt it was fairly easier as well, as we had the right amount of space to shoot are duologues. 

CONSTRUCTION: BIKER BOYS

Today we filmed another scene for our opening sequence which were the biker boys. To add to the stereotypical biker boys effect, one of them was dressed wearing a black leather jacket, whilst the other one was wearing black boots with his legs up on the table - which is something you wouldn't do or see in a restaurant.

We put up a green screen on the wall behind them to make it easier for us to edit the interior of a cafe on to it.

We had to do at least 9  takes in order to get this exactly right: it turned out well because of are attention to detail.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

We filmed another scene today, which included two girls in the restaurant, making funny comments such as 'I feel like I have a fat person inside of me just waiting to get out!', whilst eating some cake with a pillow stuffed up her top.

When we set up the studio lighting, we realised we had to get the lighting in the exact same place as we had it in the other scenes we filmed, otherwise it wouldn't look the same, such as shadows etc too. We spent a few minutes moving around the lights, turning some off then more on, eventually getting the lighting we wanted, without there being any shadows on the green screen behind.
We had some problems during are filming, in which one was that the obese girl on the left, was wearing a green coat, which interfered later on with the editing of the green screen. 
However we learned from our mistakes and all together shot a comical, successful scene. 

RESEARCH: DISTRIBUTION

Evaluation question 5. Attracting and addressing your audience

Film Distribution

Today I spent a huge amount of time investing distribution which is a really key element on the chain between the film production 

1. Producer 

2. Distributor (all publicity:  website, interviews, P & A, video distribution,merchandise,  rights etc)

3. Exhibitor (cinema, home cinema, internet)

 4. Audience (people who view it)

Social media- Twitter, Facebook, TV interviews, P + A, screenings

Film Website: corner stone of getting in touch with audience  host a whole series of other social media, have links to social media eg, twitter, Facebook. For example Girl with the dragon tattoo.  

Distributors do with their budget- trailer, release date, merchandising  behind the scenes, teaser trailers, behind the scenes, premiere

Prints and Advertising- poster of the film, for example, Star Trek was re branded  had to do a campaign to tackle for women, they suggested this with an action women to the left, which isn't being sexualized. Metro reaches thousands of people, good way of distribution. Aurasma-an app which you scan over the symbol with your smart phone and it plays a preview of a television drama. 

Hollywood Vs British film

Went on the BFI site, clicked information on distribution. Watched a video by the Anglean Ruskin Cambridge, a case study on Girl with the dragon tattoo and its distribution techniques.The website did this by allowing audiences by clicking on a character, this is a new way of interacting and creating buzz for the films upcoming. Facebook builds audiences through the two step flow theory to attract audiences 

DISTRIBUTION

DISRIBUTION: So what is distribution? We studied this by looking at how the BFI have supported digital distribution.
Today we spent a lot of time investigating distribution which is a key element in the chain between the film’s production and its audience. Distributors use a spread of means to gain traction and build awareness, such as digital media:

·         Film website

·         Trailers on the website

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

·         Aurasma (linking print with online trailers)

Distributors also use print advertising:

·         P+A includes poster campaigns

·         Interviews in newspapers

·         Campaigns in free papers like Metro

Trailers and other media

·         10 second spot TV campaigns

·         30 second TV campaigns

·         Cinema traikers

·         Screenings

·         Tv radio interviews

·         They also set up distribution for DVD rights and exhibition rights

FILM WEBSITE

How I plan to attract+ build audiences (you say ‘We decided to do X because it worked well for (case Study)

FACEBOOK

We went to the bfi website- watched case study on the dragoon tattoo

Print- distributers fund and pay- language- attracting and engaging audiences
TORTOISE IN LOVE

DRAGON

ALICE CREED

THE INFIDEL